Tag: Interrogation

The interrogation bill headed for Bush’s desk would allow him to detain anyone indefinitely and decide (privately) what constitutes torture; it eliminates habeas corpus and judicial review, and it permits coerced evidence. The N.Y. Times calls it “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”

Stephen Colbert put McCain and friends to shame on Monday by exposing the Republican senator’s torture protest as pseudo-opposition and their compromise with the Bush administration as an abject cave-in.

Join Truthdig’s Robert Scheer, along with Arianna Huffington, Tony Blankley and Matt Miller, for a lively discussion on the week in politics, policy and culture. This week: the Bush-Republican detainee-interrogation deal, U.N. rants, midterm elections, corporate spying, upheaval at the Los Angeles Times and the furor surrounding the pope’s recent comments on Islam.

The editorial boards of the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post, along with First Amendment lawyer Glen Greenwald, condemned the interrogation bill agreed upon by the president and a group of GOP senators.

In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” former President Bill Clinton vigorously argued against Bush’s torture plans, citing both moral and practical reasons: “We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don’t need blanket advanced approval for blanket torture.”

The USA show “The 4400” featured this dramatized depiction of “waterboarding,” in which victims are made to feel as though they are drowning. Andrew Sullivan says it’s time to look at what our government is doing and call it by its proper name.

Only last week, the president drew a line in the sand over his proposed interrogation rules, threatening to cancel the CIA interrogation program altogether if a trio of rebellious Republicans refused to pass his version. In a total reversal, the Bush administration has reestablished talks with the defiant senators, hoping to work out a deal and pass the stalled legislation.

On Monday, Stephen Colbert went after Bush?s proposed re-imagining of the Geneva Convention by inviting the president to come on the ?Report? and demonstrate his preferred interrogation techniques. Mocking the president?s assertion that the treaty banning torture lacks clarity, Colbert observed: ?I personally think the image of the president saying specifically what, to him, is not an outrage on human dignity will make everyone see his position very clearly….?

The Republican senators who broke ranks with the administration to oppose Bush’s interrogation policy have indicated the possibility of a compromise. On Friday the president showed no willingness to adjust his proposals, but Stephen J. Hadley, his national security advisor, hinted at the prospect during a television appearance Sunday.

During the president’s Rose Garden press conference, NBC reporter David Gregory asked Bush how he would feel if a country like Iran or North Korea kidnapped an American citizen, tortured him and then tried him without letting him see any evidence. Bush’s answer was a nonsensical non sequitur. (Read it) (Salon post - ad required)

Bush says that questioning of suspected terrorists “won’t go forward” unless Congress passes a law clarifying the treatment and interrogation of such detainees.Believe that? If so, there’s a nice Nigerian billionaire we met on the Internet who’d love to discuss a business opportunity with you…

GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham is telling reporters that White House officials effectively forced military lawyers to sign a letter supporting President Bush’s new legislation on harsh interrogation tactics—after the lawyers previously testified publicly against those measures.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell sided with Sen. John McCain and others in opposition to Bush’s plan to authorize harsh interrogation of terror suspects. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” he said.

In 2002 Abu Zubaydah, a captured Bin Laden henchman, experienced two radically different kinds of interrogation as the FBI and the CIA secretly engaged in a debate that continues today. As one official put it: ?When you rough these guys up, all you do is fulfill their fantasies about what to expect from us.?

Legislation put forward by the Bush administration this week would legalize the same torture techniques recently banned by the Army. By selectively interpreting the Geneva Conventions, the legislation would allow CIA operatives and even the Army, should it decide to revert to previous rules, to conduct interrogations using unsavory methods.

Yielding to pressure from humanitarian groups, Congress and the Supreme Court, the U.S. Army will release a new field manual that affords all detainees protection from torture under the Geneva Convention. The new document will ban several ?interrogation? methods that have drawn criticism, including simulated drowning and the use of dogs to terrorize detainees.

Specifically, today’s Supreme Court ruling held that the president overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

But more important, Think Progress interprets the ruling to mean that “the Authorization for the Use of Military Force—issued by Congress in the days after 9/11—is not a blank check for the administration.”

Also, SCOTUSblog says the ruling means that the Geneva Convention does apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda, and consequently “this almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation tactics of waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act.”

In a new book, a medical ethicist has compiled a list of interrogation techniques documented at U.S. detention centers in Guantanamo and Afghanistan. They include: external electric shocks; beating; punching with fists; use of truncheons; stretching or suspension (to tear ligaments or muscles to cause asphyxia) ...UPDATE: An L.A. Times reporter writes that the barring of U.S. reporters from Gitmo “make[s] us all the more determined to question, probe and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in the country’s name.”